With heroines including a queen who can freeze you, a guttersnipe who can charm you, and a diva who’ll make you want to dance, a half-dozen new musical productions are slated for the last half of the 2017-2018 Broadway season, writes Ron Cohen.
The openings include the usual crowding up in April, as new shows race to get on stage before the eligibility cut-off on 26 April for the coveted and box-office boosting Tony Awards, to be presented 10 June.
However, two early birds will begin previews this month for March openings.
Here’s the overall line-up, listed in order of preview starts:
Escape to Margaritaville: Previews start 16 February for an opening 15 March.
This new show features songs – old and new – by composer-performer Jimmy Buffet, whose music, with its Caribbean ambiance, is often described as “island escapism.” Despite his beach-bum persona, Buffer is a busy businessman, whose endeavours include the Margaritaville restaurant chain. So, why not promote the eatery with a Broadway show?
Anyway, the book, by TV writers Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley, centres on a carefree singer-songwriter who entertains and tends bar at a shabby Caribbean resort and his romance with a beautiful but not-so-carefree tourist. She’s an ambitious environmental scientist.
Christopher Ashley directs. He’s currently represented on Broadway by his Tony-winning work for the hit Come From Away. He’s also the artistic director at the prestigious La Jolla Playhouse in California, where Escape to Margaritaville had its premiere outing last year.
Playing the carefree singer-songwriter will be Paul Alexander Nolan, whose previous Broadway outings include the title role in the 2012 revival of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Frozen: Previews start 22 February for a 22 March opening.
In case you were possibly at all wondering, this is not a musical version of the grim Bryony Lavery drama with the same title about to see a West End revival. No, indeed. This is, of course, the stage version of the Disney super-blockbuster, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, ready to take Broadway by ice storm – after a very carefully watched tryout in Denver, Colorado – under the banner of Disney Theatricals.
With a score by the same married team that created the film’s songs, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the show promises twice as much music as the movie. The book, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen story, is by Jennifer Lee, who wrote the screenplay and co-directed the film.
Directing the stage musical is Michael Grandage, who, as I’m sure you know, was artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse from 2002 to 2012, and whose way with musicals has been proven in London productions of such works as Merrily We Roll Along, Grand Hotel and Guys and Dolls.
Rob Ashford, a Broadway choreographer who has moved notably into directing and has won plaudits for his direction at the Donmar, concentrates here on the choreography.
Heading the cast are two Broadway veterans. Caissie Levy, whose credits include the 2014 Broadway redo of Les Misérables and Ghost, both in New York and London, plays Queen Elsa, who can’t help freezing things with her touch. Patti Murin, with Broadway appearances that include Lysistrata Jones and a turn as Glinda in Wicked, plays Elsa’s loving sister Anna.
Carousel: Previews start 28 February for a 12 April opening.
This generally defined masterwork by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II first spun around on Broadway in 1945, running for 890 performances. Its last appearance on Broadway was the Nicholas Hytner-directed production brought from London by Lincoln Center Theatre in 1994, closing in early 1995 after 38 previews and 337 performances.
This new revival is being guided by director Jack O’Brien, revered for his work on both plays and musicals, his Tony wins ranging from Hairspray to Tom Stoppard’s three-part The Coast of Utopia.
The cast features a trio of headliners. Jessie Mueller, late of Waitress, for which she was Tony-nominated, and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, for which she won a Tony, will play Julie Jordan, the textile mill worker who falls in love with Billy Bigelow, a carnival barker.
Joshua Henry, with Tony nominations for his work in Violet and The Scottsboro Boys, takes on Billy Bigelow. Then, there’s grand opera superstar Renée Fleming as community stalwart Nettie Fowler, who will presumably sing the heck out of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
Adding to the marquee sparkle is the show’s choreographer, Justin Peck, an acclaimed soloist and the resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet.
Set in the state of Maine in the late 1800s, Carousel is adapted from the play Liliom by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar. Will O’Brien deepen the resonant themes of economic harshness and domestic violence that somewhat marked the Hytner production, or will we just revel in the show’s glorious score and uplifting sentiments? Time will tell.
Mean Girls: Previews start 12 March for an 8 April opening.
This long-awaited adaptation of the 2004 movie that gleefully defined adolescent nastiness is another Broadway show that should have young girls – and ladies who were young girls 14 years ago – storming the box office.
It tells of a newly arrived high school student – an innocent from Africa, where she’s been living with her zoologist parents – who falls in with a group of snarky girls. The book is by the celebrated actress-writer Tina Fey. Her screenplay spawned the trend-setting movie.
The score has music by Jeff Richmond, Fey’s husband, and lyrics by Neil Benjamin.
Casey Nicholaw both directs and choreographs. His resumé includes The Book of Mormon, garnering him a Tony Award for direction, plus such shows as Something Rotten!, Aladdin and The Drowsy Chaperone, all of which landed him Tony nominations.
The cast features Erika Henningsen as Cady, the new girl in town, and Taylor Louderman as Regine, the leader of the meanies. It’s not a star-studded cast. The magnetic names of this production, which had an enthusiastically received tryout stand in Washington DC, are simply Tina Fey and the title itself.
My Fair Lady: Previews begin March 15 for a 19 April opening.
This revival of the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe gem, which often competes with Carousel when old-school theatrical scholars name the all-time greats, is being produced by Lincoln Center Theatre. (Of course, My Fair Lady far outpaces Carousel when it comes to racking up performances. Its original Broadway production, which opened in 1956, ran for six and a half years.)
With director Bartlett Sher at the helm, this new revival is a follow-up to his highly acclaimed Lincoln Center re-dos of two Rodgers and Hammerstein works, South Pacific and The King and I.
Eliza Doolittle, the Covent Garden flower peddler who learns to speak like a lady and wins the heart of her imperious teacher, will be played by Lauren Ambrose.
Although she has had a busy career in films and television as well as theatre and also sings with her own band, this will mark her first time in a Broadway musical. A few years ago she was set to play Fanny Brice in a Sher-directed revival of Funny Girl, but it never materialised.
Her teacher, Professor Henry Higgins, will be played by Harry Hadden-Paton, making a Broadway debut. Appropriately, he’s a British stage and screen actor, known especially for his television work on Downton Abbey.
Other notables in the company include Norbert Leo Butz as Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father; Diana Rigg as Higgins’ mother, and Allan Corduner as Colonel Pickering.
Christopher Gattelli, who worked with Sher on South Pacific and The King and I, choreographs.
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical: Previews start 28 March for a 23 April opening.
Donna Summer, who during the disco era reigned as its Queen, gets to do it all over again in this new musical, which premiered at the aforementioned La Jolla Playhouse. The show, featuring a bevy of Summer hits, is directed and co-written by Des McAnuff, the artistic director emeritus of La Jolla.
Among his many successes, McAnuff scored a smash in a similar vein with Jersey Boys, which detailed the career of the Four Seasons pop group and its lead singer Frankie Valli. In Summer, he’s working with the same choreographer, Sergio Trujillo. Co-writing the book are Robert Cary and Colman Domingo.
The script uses three actresses to portray Summer at various stages of her life and it has just been announced that the trio of stars from the La Jolla Playhouse world premiere will return to the show when it lands on Broadway this spring: Tony Award winner LaChanze (The Color Purple), Ariana DeBose (A Bronx Tale) and newcomer Storm Lever (Freaky Friday).
Addenda: Also bringing music to Broadway this spring, more as a concert rather than a musical, is an enterprise known as Rockotopia, which merges symphonic and opera classics with rock.
The show features five lead singers, a choir, a rock band and a 20-piece orchestra. It’s a performance where you’ll hear such mashups as Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ with Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Blue Haze’. It comes in for a six-week engagement beginning 20 March.
Meanwhile, another concert continues to expand the paradigms of Broadway. It’s the solo concert being put on by rock legend Bruce Springsteen, which packs the Walter Kerr Theatre for five performances a week.
A sell-out when it opened in October, Springsteen on Broadway was originally scheduled to close 3 February, but has been extended to 30 June. It also has Broadway pundits wondering whether other rock stars will be tempted to take a similar Broadway plunge.
And finally, further sizzle has been added to the season with the entry of Broadway legend Bernadette Peters into the revival of Hello, Dolly!, replacing the more general legend Bette Midler. He is accompanied by British actor Charlie Stemp, making his Broadway debut in the role of Cornelius Hackl, having won acclaim in Chichester and the West End for his performance as Kipps in Half a Sixpence.
Opening night is scheduled for 22 February. And isn’t it swell to see that a vintage warhorse like Dolly can still make waves on old Broadway?
Ron Cohen
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